In 1905 – 110 acres of land in southern Nevada were auctioned off, founding a new city. They would become downtown Las Vegas which would grow to become the host for major tech events like Comdex, CES and more.

In 1987 – The Soviet Union launched the Polyus prototype orbital weapons platform from Baikonur Cosmodrome Site 250 in Kazakhstan. It failed to reach orbit. Polyus was designed to destroy SDI satellites with a megawatt carbon-dioxide laser.

In 2004 – Using a computer with a 2.4-GHz Pentium 4 processor, Josh Findley discovered the 41st Mersenne prime, 224,036,583 – 1. Mersenne primes have a close connection to perfect numbers, which are equal to the sum of their proper divisors.

Like Tech History? Purchase Tom Merritt’s Chronology of Tech History at Merritt’s Books site.

In 1973 – The United States launched Skylab, the country’s first space station as part of the Apollo space program.

In 1984 – According to his Facebook profile Mark Zuckerberg was born in Dobbs Ferry, New York. He would grow up to found Facebook.

In 1992 – Texas Instruments decided to take on the dominance of Intel, announcing its own 486 microprocessor chip. Cyrix corp. designed the chip for TI, but it proved unsuccessful in weakening Intel’s dominance.

Like Tech History? Purchase Tom Merritt’s Chronology of Tech History at Merritt’s Books site.

In 1884 – A group of people interested in the new field of electricity met in New York to start the American Institute of Electrical Engineers.

In 1939 – Franklin Doolittle put experimental station W1XPW on the air, making it the first commercial FM radio station in the United States. The station later became WDRC-FM in Bloomfield, Connecticut.

In 1958 – The trademark Velcro was registered, protecting the name of the multi-purpose material that manages cables everywhere.

Like Tech History? Purchase Tom Merritt’s Chronology of Tech History at Merritt’s Books site.

In 1936 – University of Washington education professor August Dvorak received a patent for his new more efficient keyboard layout. While widely recognised as superior to the QWERTY layout, the Dvorak keyboard is not widely used.

In 1941 – German engineer Konrad Zuse presented the Z3, the first program-controlled electromechanical digital computer. It succeeded the Z1 which was the first binary digital computer.

In 2005 – Elijah Wood revealed the Xbox 360 on the MTV Music Awards. Microsoft wouldn’t announce price or release dates, only saying it would arrive for sale by the end of the year.

Like Tech History? Purchase Tom Merritt’s Chronology of Tech History at Merritt’s Books site.

In 1951 – Jay Forrester filed a patent application for matrix core memory. Professor Forrester led a team at MIT that developed a three-dimensional magnetic structure code-named Project Whirlwind. It was the first random access memory that was practical, reliable and relatively high-speed.

In 1979 – Daniel Bricklin and Robert Frankston gave the first demonstration of VisiCalc, the program that made the Apple II popular with businesses.

In 1997 – Deep Blue won its final match against Chess master Garry Kasparov, becoming the first computer to defeat a chess champion in match play.

Like Tech History? Purchase Tom Merritt’s Chronology of Tech History at Merritt’s Books site.